Burning
by Avelera
Summary: Set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. Darth Vader, once Anakin Skywalker, reflects on what he has become and what he has lost.


Burning

By Avelera

Disclaimer: All recognizeable characters and settings belong to George Lucas and the Star Wars franchise. I am making no money off this piece.

Author Note: This is based on a thought that occurred to me after seeing Episode III. In the Episodes IV-VI Obi-Wan Kenobi believes that Darth Vader is more machine than man and deserves to be killed. Yet after Episode III we are able to view Anakin's actions with more compassion. This is something of a melding of these two thoughts, and also my attempt at an explanation.

I apologize for the somewhat confusing prose style, but this was how the story wanted to be written. It is intended to reflect the mindset of the speaker.

Please enjoy!

* * *

It has been ten years. 

He believed, but he could not be sure. Time slipped between his fingers, racing through every moment that he tried to slow and savor, and stretching the moments of bleak nothingness across eternity. Only the ebb and flow of power soothed him and allowed him to lose himself in the rhythmic hiss of a stranger's breathing that stole from the sleep he no longer required.

In the few scattered moments of self left to him he would entertain the impossibility that beneath the mechanized shell he was still whole and human. That, should he so choose, he could simply peel away the thick layers of cloth and wire to reveal the same body he had seen the last time he had willfully looked in a mirror. At times he held this image close, until its searing presence burned his mind and heart. He would then hold it a moment longer because for that moment it reminded him that he was _alive_.

But living meant burning and so he would retreat into anesthesia of undeath. Forgetting that time before and the time during when he had been dying and kept alive by passion and hatred. That time, the bridge between his life and his current existence where he could trace his journey into what he had become rather that silently pretend that it had simply _happened_ and now he was thus.

Much easier to pretend that that day had happened to another, that someone else had killed her and then been burnt alive by their own hatred. Easier to believe that another's mistakes had placed him within his walking prison and that terrible moment when he had _known_ that she was…gone… did not exist. Even thinking about it as if it had been him that was there… when the first breath had become clear and the first step taken and the first question clarified like a firestorm clears a forest…even thinking about it burned his soul beyond endurance, burned it into approaching madness that with each meditation seemed less strange.

Perhaps one day he would find himself within the madness, beyond the edge where the fire was ever-burning and the clarity was like that day when his ambition had…no. Not yet.

It has been ten years.

Too soon to give in.

And yet…

Just for a moment.

"Padme," a deep voice not his own but rather his prison stealing the words and translating them for others who did not deserve to hear her name, rattled strangely in his ears. He allowed the name to fly free for a moment, echoing on the cold steel walls like a bird beating its wings without hope against a windowless cage. Take them back, for the world is too dark for such purity even from the lips of a corpse that could not have known her.

'Padme,' he whispered his mind and allowed one long dead to speak his heart.

Anakin Skywalker awakened in the darkness behind Darth Vader's closed eyes and retreated into himself, allowing his physical body to collapse into a chair as he journeyed within, where the present could not find him and he could not see what he had become. There, in a tiny corner of his mind kept clean of the blood and filth that coated his brain lay a small corner of tranquility where lay the house by the lake, surrounded by flowers that bloomed to shame the rainbow. There, within a ring of violets the most beautiful of them all lay as if sleeping.

In his own mind he had no form, yet the hand that stroked the petal-softness of her cheek was warm golden flesh and the image reflected in her warm brown eyes was a man just entering his prime, his features smooth and at peace.

She said not a word, but a loving hand placed on her abdomen spoke of a coming blessing. Free of fear, anger, or hatred.

He felt tears prick his eyes and run down the old scars of his cheek.

Here on the shores of the lake on Naboo, Anakin Skywalker cradled his wife in his arms, unaware of the sorrow and loss that now controlled his life, sugar-coated with directionless power.

Here, he was at peace.

* * *

Darth Vader was pulled from his reverie as a familiar presence brushed the outskirts of his mind. The stiffness of his limbs gave him a clue of how long he had sat motionless as the reflections of planets traveled aimlessly across the windows of his prison. 

Someone who had known the dead man the resided within was reaching out. He sensed no purpose in the invasion. Not quite curiosity, yet neither was it boredom. It was as if the tendrils of thought were encased in reflective armor that kept its intentions a secret.

"What are you looking for, Obi-Wan Kenobi?" Darth Vader said aloud to the silent presence. "Perhaps this?"

He allowed the dead man's mentor in, showed him the slaughterhouse that was his ruined brain, pulled him relentlessly towards the cogs and wheels that pushed it onward like meat grinder destroying endlessly. He bared every bloodstained thought, hatred, and memory from the past ten years reaching back to the beginning. "Is this what you expected, my brother?" he felt the presence recoil, jerk back and attempt to pull free from Vader's iron grip.

Let Obi-Wan see.

Let him know, so that he may never come back with his searchlight that only thinly veiled desperate and painful hope interwoven with compassion. Let him know that the dead man was gone and now it was only Skywalker's corpse that could be ended, obliterated, stopped.

Perhaps then...

Perhaps then, when Obi-Wan is certain that there is no humanity left in this shell he will come to end it all.

Perhaps then…

Anakin Skywalker can hold his wife forever amongst the flowers off Naboo.


End file.
